peopleofthedas | Entries tagged with discussion: writing

Anyone else signing up for the new round of

dragonagebb? I really want to write a big A/U fic, but longfic is notoriously my weakness. I'd like to have a reader, not for beta or SPAG, just someone who is looking forward to the next part of the story, who will spur me along a bit. Maybe help me brainstorm. What I wanted to suggest is some kind of equivalent exchange. I figured I'm not the only one who struggles with deadlines and structure, and there sure are a lot of writers in this community. Would anyone like to be longfic-buddies with me?

Current Mood: geeky

scarylady

It occurs to me that the lovely, and altogether too modest,

msbarrows has not linked her latest work here. She mailed me a link over a week ago and I intended to bung it up, but press of events stopped me.

Therefore, I present to you the dulcet tones of this lovely lady, reading 3 short DA fanfics, including one of my own. I'm proud to have been included in her selections.

http://msbarrows.tumblr.com/post/18983216080

PS. This exercise also got me thinking about how differently I would write if I was writing for audio as my primary media. There were a few things - in the story of mine that she picked - which worked well as the written word, but didn't translate perfectly for a voice file.

Hmm. Anyone had any experience of writing for audio and fancies chipping into a debate? Would love to hear your thoughts.

kelcat

Seeing as how I've written over a dozen fics about Nathaniel and Anders, I've compiled quite a playlist that I use when writing. Seeing as how I've been a little stunted writing-wise lately, I figured writing the list up all prettily with notes and links might help get me motivated.

I wasn't actually going to share it with anyone, it was more for my own amusement. But, on the extremely odd chance that someone might actually be interested in this, I figured what the hell and am posting it here.

If nothing else, it might introduce some good songs you've never heard of before? I...have no idea.

(The things I do when I'm supposed to be writing...)

imaginariet

Hello there, good people of Thedas!

My name is Bethany. I've been lurking here for the past few months or so off and on, enjoying the stories and waiting (a little impatiently) to post one of my own... once one actually happens. :P Hopefully that will be soon. This year I'm doing a NaNoWriMo based on Dragon Age: Origins, my second year attempting and hopefully my first year winning.

Just wondering if anyone else here is participating in NaNoWriMo this year, and if so, is anybody doing theirs on Dragon Age?

Current Mood: and nervous
Current Music: The Ronettes - Be My Baby

analect

Just the briefest of brief notes to say - further to stuffs discussed in this thread -

writerslounge is now lurching into sort of being alive.

If you're a writer of original fiction and looking for somewhere to chat, vent, exchange ideas, resources, or even get some con crit and/or discussion on your work, join us. Joiiiin usssss. We never bite unless asked nicely.

Current Mood: sore

amhran_comhrac

It's no secret that many, maybe even most of us here are writers. In the interest of sharing "best practices," as they say in the cube farm, I thought it would be interesting to discuss our own processes. Maybe someone can pick up a trick or two that way. Some of us co-write, some use betas, one person (and my virtual hat is off to you for your bravery,

miri1984 ), has even taken to livestreaming as she writes.
So, I suspect there's a great deal of variety.

Share! How do you write?

analect

Okay, I'm aware I'm still A New Person here, but I'm curious. To those who write original fiction as well as fanfic: do you belong to any groups, comms, critique circles etc., and how differently do you treat your writing of fanfic to original material, if at all?

I realise this a pretty general question, but one thing that's really struck me over the past few months is how much of a community feel fanfic culture has, and it's something that I haven't seen anywhere I've ever been with original work. Is there a genuine difference, d'you think, or is it a matter of how individual communities and groups gel together? (There's a veiled community love-in thing here, btw. Just saying.)

Current Mood: curious

amhran_comhrac

For those of us with an app-using iWhatever.

PlainText (will open in iTunes).

It’s… dun dun dun… a plain text editor. That syncs automatically with your dropbox account.
(if you don’t have dropbox… go… now! Seriously. Free cloud based storage that syncs files between all your computers and devices. Start a chapter on your desktop, finish on your laptop. Or ipad. Iphone. Work computer. The telegraph in your favorite dirigible. Your campfire. The Overmind Brain Interface. Whatever.)

The interface is gorgeous. Supremely minimalistic and, with the no-adds feature, distraction free. How good is it? So good I did the first 2700 words to the next chapter of AOA while on the subway and bus this morning. On my phone.

I did a bit of the Stone and Sky chapter I put up yesterday on my commute home. By the time I sat at my computer it had been synced and a text file was ready and waiting online for me to paste into Word.

Granted, it is exactly what it claims to be: plain text. You can’t do fancy formatting or anything like that. You can type. Do work count. Edit a bit… and, well, that’s about all. But for just banging out the basics while you’re on the go, with full knowledge that it’ll need at least a once-over when you get to a real computer, I don’t think I’ve found anything better.

Of course… now I’m even more anxious to get an iPad.

amhran_comhrac

I can think of no better expert when it comes to the subject of going down. Although I don't believe he knows what a website is...

Ah, to think, after so many days of functionality it's down again. Who would have guessed?
(this blatant abuse of my authority brought to you by Jethann's enchanting blue eyes)

The current damage, from what I've seen:
*can't log in
*updates posted in the last 10 hours not visible
*can't submit reviews

Edit: And then it was up... and down again. Glorious!
So... Does anyone need an Archive of Our Own invite? I've got ten. I literally hit "request invites" and gave "to woo people in the DA fandom away from ffnet" as my reason... and about two hours later ten shiny new codes were dropped into my account. Drop me a PM with your email address.

elysium_fic

Someone on BSN remarked that subscriptions have gone live over at AO3 (at least for tracking authors, not sure if you can track specific stories yet) and I tested it and it appears they have!

WOOT!

amhran_comhrac

Did you know fanfiction.net is broken?
No, really!
FFnet seems to be working again. It let me go in and edit the flagged characters on a story I uploaded using the workaround.
However, I'm still waiting on notifications for the new story, and about a dozen review notices (as well as notices for new chapters of fics I follow), so YMMV. I don't know if the errors and issues are unrelated.

( There is a workaround )

There are also alternatives if you want to wash your hands of the mess completely.

Livejournal/Dreamwidth...

pros: easy to update thanks to the rich text editor (you can just paste from your word processor), you're already here, communities for fandoms *yo*
cons: smaller reader base, isn't really set up for a fiction archive

DeviantArt
pros: wickedly easy to update if you've already posted the chapter to your documents section in ffnet. (open it, click the HTML button, copy, and paste into the text section of DeviantArt's update. Boom.). Also, decent sized DA community.
cons: not as big a com as ffnet, more geared towards visual arts, no way to give a written summary/description for the search feature. Wheat to chaff? horrifying.

Archive of Our Own
Pros: you can import from ffnet by pasting your url, additional servers have clearly solved their slow-as-molasses problems, posting new chapters is as easy as ffnet, or easier. Also supports co-authors, tagging stories as part of a series, and a few other nice features
cons: small community, lack of feedback, importing will require you tweak each chapter since notes invariably come out a hot mess, in beta so you need to sign up and wait to get an invite (didn't take long for me, but with ffnet's issues it may be longer now)

note: anyone want an invite? Users can apparently request extra invite codes so I'd be happy to give it a shot.
(FYI, I'm LupusYondergirl over there)

Lunaescence
I admit, I know next to nothing about this, beyond it being 'moderated' for quality. There's only about 50 DA stories on there now. Anyone have an opinion?

Anyone have any opinions on these, or know of any I missed?
I know I left BSN off. There's a reason for that... the DA2 community creation forum allows LINKING to your fan works, as opposed to the posting that was allowed in the DAO forums.

I'm kind of falling in love with AO3 again, now that it's so much faster. I've uploaded EVERYTHING there... and it took me maybe two hours.

Current Location: tropical Buffalo

kelcat

I'm dreadfully bad at remembering what needs to be capitalized and what doesn't so I thought I'd ask our experienced writers on here :)

I know that when you're using dialog that speaks directly to the person with a title that it is capitalized, such as "You are an idiot, Arl Eamon" or "You are an idiot, Mage." But when you're just referring to the person is it capitalized or not? In other words, would the phrase be "The arl is an idiot" or "The Arl is an idiot"?

And how about referring to Vigil's Keep? Is it "the keep" or "the Keep?"

It's driving me crazy because I know I'm not being consistent with these rules in my stories and it's driving me nuts! Any input would be appreciated.

Oh, and as a side note: is there a list somewhere of the forum tags used here? I can never figure out how to tag my posts.

Current Mood: curious

jannifer

One of the wonderful things about the English language is its richness. There are so many regional variations -- not just among British, American, Australian English, but within those countries. Some of these expressions are wonderful and could offer something special in dialogue within our fiction. Other things are just interesting little bits.

I've added some new comments with more goodies I remember my grandmother using. Yay!

UPDATED QUESTION: Could some kind speaker of UK English explain the meaning of the phrase "no better than she should be"? I have the basic idea, but some clarification would be helpful.

( Some examples include... )

Current Mood: content
Current Location: tucked up in a nest of kitties

scarylady

Fanfiction.net just found a brand new way to annoy the hell out of me.

When I sign in to my account, with my username and password I might add, it now wants me to prove I'm a human being with Captcha.

I.bloody.hate.Captcha.

Why the hell would they use it for signed accounts, rather than just anon or unsigned comments?

Bah >:

Current Mood: annoyed

1smut_princess

...I've created a flippin' language for the horseclans of flippin' Antiva. Yes. I am obsessive compulsive.
Zamas Ga'hals The list at the moment, is incomplete. I would say "Someone shoot me" but that'd be bad. I would like to finish stuff long before that would happen.

Current Location: Squishy Seat
Current Music: Duran Duran - Skin Divers

elysium_fic

So, the more slashfic I write, the more I come up against the prospect of the dreaded epithet.

I'm fortunate, in that before I ever got into writing slash, I had friends who wrote a great deal of slash and I watched them go through the process. But I've found that DAO sometimes muddies the waters, because epithets are often used canonically.

In-game, nearly all the characters refer to other characters by epithets at some point or another. I mean, just look at Shale's dialogue (which I sometimes suspect was written specifically to poke fun at the overuse of epithets.)

My rule of thumb has been to avoid epithets as much as possible in slash (though I use them regularly when dealing with the POV of NPCs who use them canonically; for instance, I find it perfectly in-character and appropriate for Zevran and many other characters to think of Morrigan as "the witch") but I've been called on the repetitive use of names by my betas a time or two. So I thought I would bring this before the community and see how the rest of you tackle this issue.

My epithet bible tends to be this:

Epithets: Fandom's Designated Hitters

Specifically, the following passages:
Please. I beg you. In the name of everything anyone has ever held holy -- never use a job title in place of someone’s name in a consensual sex scene, unless the job title is “prostitute” (or a variant thereof), or your characters are role-playing for kicks.

and

In short, context and characterization are everything when you're dealing with epithets. Don't just use them because you think your readers will be bored reading a name, or a pronoun, again. Use them because they're necessary to the story you're trying to tell, or leave them out entirely.

So. Appropriate use would be Shale calling Wynne "the elder mage" or Sten thinking of someone by their job title, because those are in-context and in-character.

Less appropriate (to use an example that came up between me and my beta today) might be Alistair thinking of Duncan as "the Warden-Commander" after he just finished giving him a blowjob.

Other resources:
Fandom Grammar @ LJ

and
Fanfic Symposium: Banishing the Wild Epithet
mostly because it makes me laugh.

The epithet had been the cause of Minerva McGonagall's untimely death. The Head of Gryffindor House had seen one too many horrors, and finally the Animagus had breathed her last. Dumbledore's right hand had laid down her life that others might not die from the same tragic error. The gray-haired witch's sacrifice would never be forgotten.

zute

...will probably get me put on a "watch list". Today I was Googling how to start chemical fires and Greek fire. Tee hee! Not to mention some variations on medieval siege weapons. *waves to the NSA* It's okay, just writing fiction.

biffmclaughlin

Random questions as I set the groundwork for a new story. The Wiki is not producing the maps I want to look at today, and here's what I'm pondering:

Am I correct in thinking that Soldier's Peak is located in Highever? Based on the maps I can view, that seems to be the case, but I'm no orienteering expert, the maps are likely on different scales, and one is a hand-drawn representation, so...anyhoo...

If that were the case, how long do you suppose it would take for a party of people with horses and a covered wagon or several to get from Denerim to the Peak, knowing that the path through the tunnels to the Peak have now been cleared and well lit. I want to say five to seven days, depending on the urgency of travel...does that seem "realistic"?

Cheers,
Biff

Current Mood: geeky

varelishawt

Okay, so I've been thinking about this on and off - we know that, even though we don't see it in the game, Alistair and Anora presumably have crowns, given all the references to "I'll take the crown". But do the other nobles have any regalia at all? Maybe not as fancy as these collars of office, but something like it for maybe the teyrn and arls? The lower the rank, of course, the less fancy it gets, probably. They also had livery collars, maybe worn by those part of a coalition of nobles.

The reason I'm posting this here is if you guys think it's plausible for the Warden-Commander to wear one, as he/she is also the arl/arlessa of Amaranthine. I think they would definitely wear these things in Orlais, but I am unsure about Ferelden - much is made of the pragmatism and practicality of Fereldans.

zute

So, in my story I had to disguise Zevran however he has this big-ass tattoo on his face I can imagine was a challenge to cover up. Doesn't it seem a little counter-intuitive that Crows who probably rely on disguises from time to time, would tattoo themselves?

People of Thedas

Fanfic, fan art, game-play, fun!

Help, Oh Help

Audio DA fanfic !!

Songs To Write By

NaNoWriMo 2011

Mildly OT: comm for original fic writers

How do you write?

OT: writers' comms, discussion & support

Something new I found for writers

Jethann knows, my friends. Jethann knows.

WOOHOO! AO3 has subscriptions!

the unbearable agony of fanfiction.net

Capitalization of titles and places

Dialogue and the Oddities of the English Language

FF account control gone mad.

OCD Much?

The use of epithets in slashfic

The things I google when I'm writing a story...

Travelling Around Ferelden

Regalia - what form does it take in Dragon Age?

Facial tattoos for Crows...

Profile

News

Right Now!

Frequently Asked Questions

Other Communities

Tags

Page Summary

Expand Cut Tags